KOCHI: Jeevitham yauvanatheekshanvum hridayam premasurabhilavumaayirikkunna ee asulabhakalaghattathe ente priya suhruth engane viniyogikkunnu?
(When life is thriving in youthfulness and the heart is in the blossom of love, how do you employ this transient time, my beloved friend?) writes Keshavan Nair to his beloved Saramma in Vaikom Muhammad Basheer’s evergreen novel Premalekhanam (The Love Letter).
That was an age of love letters, born from the dynamic combination of passion and young love. In this digital age, however, the days of such letters — at times cheesy, but mostly deep and heartfelt — seem to be long gone. Are they?
Earlier this month, the Changampuzha Smaraka Grandhashala at Edappally in Kochi held a love letter contest in memory of the late poet Changampuzha Krishna Pillai’s 114th birth anniversary. The competition saw 67 participants, from various age groups and walks of life, pouring their hearts out.
Athira Suku, an interior designer won first prize, with M Madhuben, a lawyer, and Judit Jacklin, a tuition teacher, securing second and third places, respectively.
For many, this was an opportunity to express unsaid feelings and reflect on love. That prompted us to delve into the charm of love letters in these modern times when all that it takes, at times, for a relationship to bloom is a ‘swipe’.
Athira, 25, says she grew up reading the love letters of her parents, who had a love marriage. Never having written or received a love letter, she was excited at the opportunity.
Here is an excerpt from her letter:
My heart is racing as I write this letter to you. Love is lunacy — it turns thorns into roses, poison into elixir, and water into wine.
The hope that one day you will be mine is what keeps me going. Like the sky that stands guard over the earth, I will be by your side, always...
“It was fun to just sit down and pour my feelings into a letter for the first time,” she says. “I realise that one has to put it in a letter — the feeling for your first love at least. Having a chat or a phone conversation is just not the same.”
For 51-year-old Madhuben, love is a unique phenomenon that’s capable of giving one the greatest joy and the greatest sorrow. “It can spring suddenly, out of the blue, and it’s hard to put into words,” she says. “I believe love should not be acted upon; it should remain as such.”
She rues that mobile phones have made love letters a thing of the past. “The feeling of receiving a love letter is something else,” she smiles. “It is my evergreen love that sustains me, that feeds my writing.”
Condensing her 12-page short story into a one-page love letter, Madhuben, who is an actor and poet, writes of childhood sweethearts and lost love in the competition letter. Her letter is simply addressed “To you”.
Through the perspective of a man, she writes: The last time we saw the curious sight of the moonlight guiding raindrops to the earth, I was 16 and you, 15.
She continues: As the fish I caught in a towel danced in the frenzy of death, memories of you rushed to my mind.
Her letter evokes the innocence of childhood games and a friendship that transforms into love. Unrequited love and waves of nostalgia consume the letter as the writer visits his love’s old home, now uninhabited and up for sale.
Judit, 54, says she was in awe of the participants. “There were all kinds of people there, including poets and other literary figures. It was a surreal experience for me, sitting with those aged between 15 and 75 to write a love letter. It must mean they still carry love,” she says, adding that she participated in the contest alongside her 27-year-old daughter.
“This was a unique contest that piqued my curiosity. I felt excited after a long time. It was a day that brought back my college memories.”
The wind, trees, and meadows bear witness to her declarations of love for ‘Rajmohan’, a shining star of campus politics in her memories. Your gleaming eyes during those fiery speeches made me sick with love,” she writes in the contest letter.
She goes on to describe how, even after 35 years, she has kept an image of his eyes, cut out from discarded posters, like a peacock quill hidden in a notebook.
As I look into your eyes through my faded glasses, the passion in them keeps on burning, like the love that was left unsaid,” she concludes.
Reflecting on the subject of love letters, poet Vijayarajamallika notes that people used to have more “time and patience” to write, read, and wait for a love letter — unlike the present, where everything must be instant.
“There was a time when pigeons were used to send declarations of love,” she smiles. “Later, it changed to palm-leaf manuscripts and handwritten love letters, and now it’s via modern gadgets. I would not say the change is necessarily bad. That’s how the current times are.”
She adds that she still receives “elaborate love letters, mostly from men who have time to sit down and write one”. As long as the love is true and intense, communication or expression in any form is beautiful, says the writer, whose love poetry collection Nithyakamuki: Vijayarajamallikayude Thiranjedutha Pranayakavithakal will be published in January.
Aju K Narayanan, a Malayalam professor at the Mahatma Gandhi School of Letters in Kottayam, believes emails and instant messages expressing love or longing can be considered as love letters of the modern era.
“That said, handwritten love letters always carry a sense of warmth and nostalgia,” says Aju, who is also a screenwriter and director.
According to him, putting pen to paper and declaring love in one’s best handwriting, in a way that only one’s lover can understand, is an unparalleled feeling. “Love letters come straight from the heart,” says Aju, who was one of the judges of the love letter writing contest.
The bus ticket story
Meera Kamal, a writer and teacher based in Thiruvananthapuram, echoes similar sentiments. She says the thought of ‘love letter’ sparks memories tinged in bright yellow.
“Yellow has always been my favourite colour, and during college, most of my outfits reflected that,” she recalls. Once, she asked a senior student to help her get a ticket on a crowded bus. Before returning the ticket, he scribbled ‘Manjakkili’ on it, with a heart and arrow.
It was her first love letter. “Quite an amusing moment,” she laughs.
Soon after, he also started wearing yellow and began catching the same bus as Meera.
For two years, they never spoke to each other. Instead, their communication took the form of little scribbles on the bus tickets.
“For instance, he once wrote ‘Nilave’, and I replied, ‘Ennidam nerungathe’. Another time, he wrote ‘Mallikai’, and I replied, ‘Enn mannan mayanga’. On another occasion, he wrote ‘Moham’, and I responded with ‘Peythu thudangi’. These little exchanges continued, and they created a bond between us,” she reminisces.
Nearly two years later, they met briefly after her dance class, where he handed her a packet wrapped in an old newspaper. “Inside, I found a dozen yellow glass bangles wrapped in paper with the word ‘Manjakili’ all over it,” she gushes.
“I couldn’t sleep that night, eagerly awaiting the morning. But the next day, he wasn’t on the bus, nor was he there in the evening. Feeling disappointed, I looked at the bangle wrap again and, to my surprise, noticed a line in a different colour that asked, ‘Enikku vendi kathirikumo (Will you wait for me)?’”
She scribbled on a ticket that she would. However, she never got to give it to him. “Life took us in different directions,” she says. “Yet, even now, the yellow bangles and the memories of our exchanges linger. Love, after all, is life’s only truth, and it’s incredibly beautiful.”
Meera adds that she has received and written many love letters. While the expression of love has evolved from handwritten notes to modern channels like mobile apps, she believes the essence of love remains unchanged.
“Having experienced both forms of communication, I’ve noticed a significant difference: in the past, waiting was an integral part of love and its expression since communication was limited to letters. For couples living apart, these letters became essential to their relationship,” she says.
These letters often mirrored the social, political, economic, and artistic contexts of their time, particularly in the writings of earlier generations. This is why many love letters have become a part of literary history.
‘Passion flows through the nib’
Love letters have indeed been an inseparable part of literature. For writers, they come naturally. The late Rosy Thomas, wife of Malayalam playwright C J Thomas, writes about how he carefully saved all her love letters to him in an iron chest.
She didn’t discover the chest until after their marriage. In ‘Ivan Ente Priya C J’, a work dedicated to her husband, she recounts: “I opened my own stash and took out the letters he sent me. I have read each of them a hundred times. Many of them are marked by my tears and kisses.”
One could say that the book itself is a love letter from Rosy to her late husband, whom she called her ‘best friend’.
While many believe that love letters won’t return in the digital age, Midhun Raj, a 28-year-old engineer, disagrees. The clarity and intensity of a love letter is unmatched, he believes.
“Moreover, the letter is a physical object; it can be cherished and reread. Besides, your emotions cannot be accurately conveyed through text messages,” he says. “There is something beyond mere communication that happens via a love letter. Genuine passion flows through the nib.”
Inputs from Krishna P S